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Sri Lankan fishermen remanded

2014 Feb 12

The twenty-five Sri Lankan fishermen arrested by the Indian Coast Guard for fishing in the Indian territorial waters off Velankanni were produced before the Chief judicial Magistrate’s Court yesterday and remanded in Nagapattinam.

The men, from Paruthithurai and Kalthurai of Jaffna, were arrested under the Maritime Zones of India (Regulation of Fishing by foreign Vessels) Act, 1981 on Sunday night. Of the arrested, 15 were Sinhalese and five each were Tamil and Tamil Muslim fishermen. The court remanded them to custody till February 25.

Meanwhile fishermen of five coastal districts have decided to abstain from fishing from February 13 to March 10, consequent to the first round of talks held between the fishermen of Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka at Chennai last month.

The decision to abstain from fishing, as a confidence-building measure for the next round of talks to be held in Sri Lanka, was taken at a meeting attended by representatives of fishermen associations of Pudukottai, Ramanathapuram, Nagapattinam, Thanjavur and Karaikal districts at Jagadapattinam in the district on Monday.

The Centre for Human Rights and Research (CHR) Sri Lanka, www.chrsrilanka.com the sister organization of Campaign for Free and Fair Elections (CaFFE) www.caffe.lk, was established in 2010 in a bid to address the growing human rights concerns in the country and to educate the people about issues which have been neglected by the main stream media or civil society groups for various reasons. In addition to our continuous work with CSOs and human rights activism, in the past four years we have studied, spoken about and published greatly on Freedom of Information, Academic Freedom, and the Lessons Learnt and Reconciliation Commission (LLRC).